promise me

[Prof. Cecily]

Winter roses and harps.

18 hours ago, elder brother jonothor dar said:

Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of the promises he’d made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he’d paid to keep them.

This seems to support the flower argument, flowers can be costly items and Ned thinks back on the 15 years of spending he accumulated and for what? Now he loves in KL he no longer keeps the promise he made to his sister that he will never let the flowers on her grave turn "dead and black"

I've read somewhere that winter roses were cultivated in Winterfell's glass gardens. Let me find that...

Quote

The winter rose is a pale blue flower the color of frost.[1] The rare rose is said to be the most beautiful of the flowers grown in the glass gardens of Winterfell.[2]

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Winter_rose

 

 

Quote

 

10 hours ago, Wolfgirly said:

...I'm still confused about the manner Rhaegar and Lyanna went to Dorne unnoticed.

 

Indeed. Even more confusing if you consider Rhaegar was accompanied by two members of the KG (Arthur Dayne and Oswell Whent ) when he abucted/seduced a 14 year old Lyanna

 

 

6 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

My main issue with this idea is how the hell did Ned take a silver harp all the way from Dorne, to Starfall, then KL and all the way to Winterfell, stopping gods knows how many times in gods know how many places and NO ONE has seen it? 

ETA: on the promise or promises... at least one wasn't kept. To raise Jon as his own and keep it a secret from Robert maybe was a promise he made, but that one was kept. I'm more interested in the one(s) he didn't keep. 

It's not a silver harp, it's a silver stringed harp.

Even today, some harp strings are made of silver.

But we're not told Rhaegar always played a high harp and I think he must have used a lap harp when traveling.

Here's a link to give you an idea of harp sizes:

https://www.harp-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/harp-types-sizes-chart.jpg

[Traverys]

7 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

My main issue with this idea is how the hell did Ned take a silver harp all the way from Dorne, to Starfall, then KL and all the way to Winterfell, stopping gods knows how many times in gods know how many places and NO ONE has seen it? 

ETA: on the promise or promises... at least one wasn't kept. To raise Jon as his own and keep it a secret from Robert maybe was a promise he made, but that one was kept. I'm more interested in the one(s) he didn't keep. 

I don't think transporting the harp would really be all that difficult. This is not to say I'm a proponent of this harp-in-crypt theory, but it's not unreasonable. It's not a stretch to think people would be preoccupied gawking at the honorable Ned Stark's bastard baby than at anything else being transported to Winterfell. We can assume he had some kind of means of transport as I doubt he carried Lyanna's bones in his pocket. We can infer from Daenerys' vision in the House of the Undying that the harp wasn't as large as you might think:

Quote

“There must be one more,” he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. “The dragon has three heads.” He went to the window seat, picked up a harp, and ran his fingers lightly over its silvery strings.

Martin, George R.R.. A Clash of Kings: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Two (p. 527). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I think the biggest hole in the theory is how a harp would ever prove Jon's parentage. I can see the harp having some kind of sentimental value, or perhaps it is somehow more than it seems and Mance Raydar may get his hands on it. Who knows. I just like that the theory is succinct and not too far out there (a rarity these days).

54 minutes ago, Prof. Cecily said:

 

https://www.harp-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/harp-types-sizes-chart.jpg

 

Thanks for the link! I think we can assume it was a lap harp judging by those sizes. Everything else looks too impractical to pick up and play (obviously).

To be honest, up until this moment, I thought the high harp (specifically) was a woman's instrument. But apparently we have just as many men mentioned as being proficient enough to play (pluck?) it.

[elder brother jonothor dar]

13 hours ago, Wolfgirly said:

 

I'm still confused about the manner Rhaegar and Lyanna went to Dorne unnoticed.

 

Confused! how about New lifting the sige of stormsend gos off to find Lyanna and comes back with a baby and a corpse, concidering Rhaegar raped her half a hundered times, nobody thinks to ask if the baby is hers and if not where and when did he father the child; concidering he has been north of KL for the entire war and returns from the south with a new born (Ashara maybe but when did they concive? )

[Red Man Racey]

14 hours ago, The Twinslayer said:

That is not true at all.  The first description we get of the crypts tells us that they contain "the dead of House Stark."  What separates the Lords from the rest is just that the Lords are the ones with swords.  "By ancient custom, an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had been Lord of Winterfell."  

This is confirmed by Arya later in AGOT when she remembers the first time she visited the crypts:  "Robb took them all the way down to the end, past Grandfather and Brandon and Lyanna, to show them their own tombs."  

So there can't be anything unusual about the fact that Lyanna was buried in the crypts -- even Arya and Rickon are going to be buried there one day.

In fact, the only thing Ned did that was unusual was to put a sword on Brandon's tomb.  AGOT tells us that was just for the dead Lords of Winterfell.  Brandon was never Lord of Winterfell, yet in ADWD, Lady Dustin notices that Brandon's sword is missing.  

Yes, all Starks get buried in the crypt beneath Winterfell. But historically, only the Stark lords got statues on their tomb. Ned broke tradition by placing statues of Lyanna and Brandon at their tombs.

[Prof. Cecily]

3 hours ago, Traverys said:

 

I think the biggest hole in the theory is how a harp would ever prove Jon's parentage.

I wonder how anything can prove anyone's parentage in Westeros. 

 

[weirwoodface]

3 hours ago, elder brother jonothor dar said:

Confused! how about New lifting the sige of stormsend gos off to find Lyanna and comes back with a baby and a corpse, concidering Rhaegar raped her half a hundered times, nobody thinks to ask if the baby is hers and if not where and when did he father the child; concidering he has been north of KL for the entire war and returns from the south with a new born (Ashara maybe but when did they concive? )

If you're referring to Ned, you've got remember he's the Lord of Winterfell and the Warden of the North. There aren't many people in Westeros who have the rank to question him in such a manner. Not even his wife. If he brings back a baby and says "raise this child; he's mine" and that's all he says, then that's going to be the end of the story, no more questions allowed. And that's how it was.

[Davjos]

Wait didn't Ned struggle with the fact he didn't keep his promise to her? Might be I've misread it or misremember it but I somehow have in my head he failed to keep his promise to Lyanna. Therefore I always thought he promised Lyanna to kill Jon, to safe him from a hard life in this shitty world, with him being a Targ bastard in a Targ hating world. But he couldn't do it. 

[kissdbyfire]

3 hours ago, Ethelarion said:

Wait didn't Ned struggle with the fact he didn't keep his promise to her? Might be I've misread it or misremember it but I somehow have in my head he failed to keep his promise to Lyanna. Therefore I always thought he promised Lyanna to kill Jon, to safe him from a hard life in this shitty world, with him being a Targ bastard in a Targ hating world. But he couldn't do it. 

That's just it. Maybe there were more than one promise, but if so at least one he didn't keep. And that's the more interesting one imo. 

[BRANDON GREYSTARK]

4 hours ago, Ethelarion said:

Wait didn't Ned struggle with the fact he didn't keep his promise to her? Might be I've misread it or misremember it but I somehow have in my head he failed to keep his promise to Lyanna. Therefore I always thought he promised Lyanna to kill Jon, to safe him from a hard life in this shitty world, with him being a Targ bastard in a Targ hating world. But he couldn't do it. 

You did not misread or remember in the book A Game of Thrones one part of the book in the Eddard chapter he thinks about promises kept and the price he paid and in another later Eddard chapter he thinks about promises that was not kept .

[Ygrain]

22 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

ETA: on the promise or promises... at least one wasn't kept. To raise Jon as his own and keep it a secret from Robert maybe was a promise he made, but that one was kept. I'm more interested in the one(s) he didn't keep. 

He indeed made promiseS, as in, plural, but when he thinks about them on the way back from the brothel, he thinks about them only as promises he kept (and paid the price for). Broken promises come up only when he is feverish inthe Black Cells, and it is unclear to whom the promises were - he certainly didn't manage to keep his promises to Robert. However, I do think there was at least one to Lyanna that he, at that point, couldn't reasonably expect to be able to fulfill, and that this is the reason why he wants to talk to Jon so much and why he visits Bran and Rickon in their dream and tells something about Jon. IMHO, the promise would be to reveal the truth to Jon one day, and as a man awaiting death at the hands of the Lannisters, he wouldn't be able to keep the promise.

12 hours ago, elder brother jonothor dar said:

Confused! how about New lifting the sige of stormsend gos off to find Lyanna and comes back with a baby and a corpse, concidering Rhaegar raped her half a hundered times, nobody thinks to ask if the baby is hers and if not where and when did he father the child; concidering he has been north of KL for the entire war and returns from the south with a new born (Ashara maybe but when did they concive? )

Well, that may be quite simple - we are never told that Ned, Lyanna's bones and baby Jon appeared on the scene simultaneously. If, for instance, Ned used the detour to Starfall to return Dawn as a coverup and sent Jon to the North by ship and himself returned to KL with Lyanna's bones, there would be no connection.

7 hours ago, Ethelarion said:

Wait didn't Ned struggle with the fact he didn't keep his promise to her? Might be I've misread it or misremember it but I somehow have in my head he failed to keep his promise to Lyanna. Therefore I always thought he promised Lyanna to kill Jon, to safe him from a hard life in this shitty world, with him being a Targ bastard in a Targ hating world. But he couldn't do it. 

See above in my response to kissedbyfire - the broken promises come up very late in the book, so we can assume that until then, he hadn't broken any.

 

[Traverys]

11 hours ago, Prof. Cecily said:

I wonder how anything can prove anyone's parentage in Westeros. 

 

Haha so true, so true. Even being a dragonrider doesn't prove anyone to be a legitimate Targaryen, as we found out from the seeds during the Dance of the Dragons. The season 7 leak where

Spoiler

Sam finds a document stating that (1) Rhaegar divorced Elia and married Lyanna, and (2) named their son Aegon

just makes me laugh hysterically at how flimsy of a plot point it is. What does a document actually prove? The only way to prove anything in Westeros is with an army.

It makes me surprised how forgiving I was of Ned's "proof" that Cersei's children were no Robert's. Not to mention his spontaneous deduction that they must be Jamie's without really letting us know how he arrived at that. All he deduced was that Baratheon seed is strong when paired up with Lannister, nothing else. Cersei could have been having bastards with anyone. 

It also reminds me of Rhaenyra's children with her (likely gay) husband Laenor. They were both silver-haired but all of Rhaenyra's children were brunette. Hmmm... seems suspicious for two obvious reasons.

[kissdbyfire]

16 hours ago, Prof. Cecily said:

It's not a silver harp, it's a silver stringed harp.

Even today, some harp strings are made of silver.

But we're not told Rhaegar always played a high harp and I think he must have used a lap harp when traveling.

Here's a link to give you an idea of harp sizes:

https://www.harp-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/harp-types-sizes-chart.jpg

I know it's a silver stringed harp and not a silver harp, I misspoke. 

As to the bold, we are actually told specifically that Rhaegar played the high harp.

ASoS, Daenerys IV:

“Yes. And yet Summerhall was the place the prince loved best. He would go there from time to time, with only his harp for company. Even the knights of the Kingsguard did not attend him there. He liked to sleep in the ruined hall, beneath the moon and stars, and whenever he came back he would bring a song. When you heard him play his high harp with the silver strings and sing of twilights and tears and the death of kings, you could not but feel that he was singing of himself and those he loved.”

 

 

[Prof. Cecily]

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

I know it's a silver stringed harp and not a silver harp, I misspoke. 

As to the bold, we are actually told specifically that Rhaegar played the high harp.

ASoS, Daenerys IV:

“Yes. And yet Summerhall was the place the prince loved best. He would go there from time to time, with only his harp for company. Even the knights of the Kingsguard did not attend him there. He liked to sleep in the ruined hall, beneath the moon and stars, and whenever he came back he would bring a song. When you heard him play his high harp with the silver strings and sing of twilights and tears and the death of kings, you could not but feel that he was singing of himself and those he loved.”

 

 

Of course Rhaegar played the high harp- whoever said he didn't?

[kissdbyfire]

1 minute ago, Prof. Cecily said:

Of course Rhaegar played the high harp- whoever said he didn't?

You. Read my post above, where I quoted you, it's in bold. 

I missed the "always" n you initial post, my apologies.

[kissdbyfire]

There's one thing though...  this hypothetical harp hypothetically hidden in the crypts has to be easily identifiable as "Prince Rhaegar Targaryen's harp". Like, a silver stringed high harp. If it's any old lap harp (so that it could be carried all over Westeros without being noticed or seen by anyone) it would have exactly zero role to play in revealing Jon's parentage. 

[The Mountain that Cries]

On 5/26/2017 at 2:41 AM, elder brother jonothor dar said:

What did Ned promise?

I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the king. “She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father.” He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned.

But the promise has not been kept, did he promise to bury her in the Sept of Baelor or maybe a hill overlooking Stormsend?

 

Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black.... “I bring her flowers when I can,” he said. “Lyanna was … fond of flowers.”

Was it a botanical promise to water her flowers or place blue roses on her grave?  There is a pause between was and fond; possibly indicating the grief he felt from neglecting his promise?

“The Others take your honor!” Robert swore. “What did any Targaryen ever know of honor? Go down into your crypt and ask Lyanna about the dragon’s honor!” “You avenged Lyanna at the Trident,” Ned said, halting beside the king. Promise me, Ned, she had whispered.

This follows Robert killing Rhaegar if the promise is not kept and involved Rhaegar being killed, did Lyanna want Jon the baby born of rape killed by her true love Robert?

 

The clues are scattered in the books and we need to join the dots but I think we can put this mystery to bed, so what did she make Ned promise?

So made Ned promise not to be a chump.

[Prof. Cecily]

7 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

You. Read my post above, where I quoted you, it's in bold. 

I missed the "always" n you initial post, my apologies.

No worries! It's all too easy to miss out on a word.

[Ygrain]

9 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

we are actually told specifically that Rhaegar played the high harp.

Yes but that's when he played for the court. He definitely would have a smaller harp (as the HotU vision suggests) which he could take with him when travelling. If he composed new songs at Summerhal, he needed an instrument for that, as well.

7 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

There's one thing though...  this hypothetical harp hypothetically hidden in the crypts has to be easily identifiable as "Prince Rhaegar Targaryen's harp". Like, a silver stringed high harp. If it's any old lap harp (so that it could be carried all over Westeros without being noticed or seen by anyone) it would have exactly zero role to play in revealing Jon's parentage. 

One thing about transportation: musical instruments are usually transported in some kind of case or wax linen cover or the like, so unless someone rummaged through Ned's stuff, the harp wouldn't really be seen. (Not saying this must have been the case, my favourites are the dried crown of the blue roses and Rhaegar's ashes :P)

[SeaWitch]

11 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

Yes but that's when he played for the court. He definitely would have a smaller harp (as the HotU vision suggests) which he could take with him when travelling. If he composed new songs at Summerhal, he needed an instrument for that, as well.

One thing about transportation: musical instruments are usually transported in some kind of case or wax linen cover or the like, so unless someone rummaged through Ned's stuff, the harp wouldn't really be seen. (Not saying this must have been the case, my favourites are the dried crown of the blue roses and Rhaegar's ashes :P)

In another thread, there was some spitballing re the Silent Sisters, and I commented that nobody would check a body/bones they were transporting.  If Ned sent Lyanna's bones ahead with the Sisters, he could reasonably have anything else hidden in there.

(Bones and harps have a link in a few ballads. 'Binnorie' for example.)

[Prof. Cecily]

Harps and bones and bastards and promises.

11 hours ago, Ygrain said:

...we are never told that Ned, Lyanna's bones and baby Jon appeared on the scene simultaneously. If, for instance, Ned used the detour to Starfall to return Dawn as a coverup and sent Jon to the North by ship and himself returned to KL with Lyanna's bones, there would be no connection.

 

I tried looking just how Ned and Jon arrived at Winterfell after the Rebellion and found this:

Quote

 

Many men fathered bastards. Catelyn had grown up with that knowledge. It came as no surprise to her, in the first year of her marriage, to learn that Ned had fathered a child on some girl chance met on campaign. He had a man's needs, after all, and they had spent that year apart, Ned off at war in the south while she remained safe in her father's castle at Riverrun. Her thoughts were more of Robb, the infant at her breast, than of the husband she scarcely knew. He was welcome to whatever solace he might find between battles. And if his seed quickened, she expected he would see to the child's needs.

He did more than that. The Starks were not like other men. Ned brought his bastard home with him, and called him "son" for all the north to see. When the wars were over at last, and Catelyn rode to Winterfell, Jon and his wet nurse had already taken up residence.

That cut deep. Ned would not speak of the mother, not so much as a word, but a castle has no secrets, and Catelyn heard her maids repeating tales they heard from the lips of her husband's soldiers...

A Game of Thrones - Catelyn II

In any case, wouldn't the Silent Sisters have accompanied the bones of Lyanna to Winterfell? From the text, it looks as though Ned brought Jon and his wet nurse with him on his return to Winterfell, or at least that's what Cat's POV says.

I'm not entirely clear about the silent sisters and their role in ASoIaF.

 

10 hours ago, Traverys said:

Haha so true, so true. Even being a dragonrider doesn't prove anyone to be a legitimate Targaryen, as we found out from the seeds during the Dance of the Dragons. The season 7 leak where

  Hide contents

Sam finds a document stating that (1) Rhaegar divorced Elia and married Lyanna, and (2) named their son Aegon

just makes me laugh hysterically at how flimsy of a plot point it is. What does a document actually prove? The only way to prove anything in Westeros is with an army.

It makes me surprised how forgiving I was of Ned's "proof" that Cersei's children were no Robert's. Not to mention his spontaneous deduction that they must be Jamie's without really letting us know how he arrived at that. All he deduced was that Baratheon seed is strong when paired up with Lannister, nothing else. Cersei could have been having bastards with anyone. 

It also reminds me of Rhaenyra's children with her (likely gay) husband Laenor. They were both silver-haired but all of Rhaenyra's children were brunette. Hmmm... seems suspicious for two obvious reasons.

I hadn't seen that leak before.

Gosh.

Good points about Ned jumping to the conclusion Cersei's children are Jaime's!

Ah, Rhaenyra's story.

Something to reread with my second coffee.